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May made a gesture with her hands like she was clearing a cloud of lake gnats. “Look, I know. I know. I—”
“He doesn’t…I’m not with him. I haven’t been with him for almost a year. He’s not…family. He’s not fucking family. You’re not his to text ten times about where a fully grown adult has gone for a few days.”
“I know that. Listen—”
“No, for real, May.” Allie felt every cubic inch of Ben’s rich breakfast, lurching and acidified in her stomach. “I’m not with him. I’m not with him. I don’t belong to him, and he doesn’t belong with us, I’m just—”
“Like, I know. Damn it, Allie.”
Allie took a breath and looked at May without any idea where to put her rage. This was terrible and frustrating and she wanted to go home. And it was so hot in here, how did May stand it?
“Matt’s an…Matt’s an asshole.” May said this with a little nod.
Allie wasn’t sure she’d ever heard May use the word asshole. “You like him. You always liked him.”
“Did I? Always? I don’t know. I mean, you liked him. And you’re my sister, so that’s kind of that, but I remember when we first met him in college, when I brought him home because of that lab project we had together and he started hitting on you, and I distinctly didn’t like him.”
“But that was a thousand years ago. You liked him when I was going to marry him.”
May looked away. A timer went off, and she rose to pull Ben’s bread out of the oven. She placed the pan on a metal rack, reset the timer, and started running water in the sink. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “I don’t know if I made you mad or what.”
What do you mean? That was the obvious question.
But she knew what May meant, and she was too ashamed of herself to pretend not to. May meant that she had disappeared from their relationship. May meant that she had flaked out, fucked off, and abandoned her.
She would do better. She was trying to do better, right now, but making a hash of it.
“All I know is last fall you were going to get married and I was home,” May said, “trying to help you with your
flowers, and you were pissed at me for falling in love when I was supposed to be paying attention to your problems, but even so we were talking. I could tell there was something wrong. I could tell Matt didn’t make you happy. And now you’re just…did I do something to you?”
“No. No. Of course not, why—”
“Because I moved here, with Ben, and then we’re not talking. We’re not talking at all. We’re—”
“We text every day. We probably talk on the phone a few times a week.” Even as Allie said it, she knew she was lying again. Do better. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just been a really hard year for me. And things are going so good for you.”
“So you just don’t tell me anything? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it’s just complicated. All I ever hear from Mom is how much you love New York, and how great your new job is, and how you’ve got this big book deal that makes it so you can take time for your art, and I don’t want to call and complain to you about the same fucking thing I was complaining about last time, and the time before that. I broke up with my boyfriend. Nine months ago, May. Nobody cares anymore. Everyone has moved on.”
“It doesn’t seem like Matt’s moved on.” May had taken a butter knife out of a drawer, and now she was sliding it around the edges of the bread pan.
“But I’m supposed to have. And Matt says he has, and that this is what a civil breakup looks like, where everyone can still get along. I dump him the day of our wedding and he wants us all to show up at the reception and dance together, because we still care about each other, and it makes me crazy, but I can’t talk about it with him, I can’t talk about it with Mom, I can’t talk about it with anybody, and you’re like a thousand miles away, as happy as you’ve ever been in your whole entire life, so I can’t talk about it with you, either. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Fair to me?” She sawed the butter knife with renewed vigor. Her nostrils were flaring—never a good sign with May.
“Yeah.”
“Fair? You’re telling me the fair thing to do is just not tell me anything, ever? It’s fair to stop talking to me so I have to call Mom and ask her how you’re doing just to get some semblance of news about my sister?” She turned the bread pan over and dumped the loaf onto the cooling rack. “Like I’d tell Mom that Ben’s started this restaurant and he’s hardly ever home, and we’re spending every dime we’ve got so I can sit in this apartment and be a writer and an artist even though I’ve never done that and I don’t have a book deal, I have an agent, which sounds awesome but he’s made me rewrite my first book and redo all the concept drawings six times, and maybe if I come up with something good enough he’ll shop it around—and even then we’re talking a year, maybe, before I see any money, if I turn out to be any good. It’s scary, but I can’t tell my sister, because she’s punishing me for moving away, but it’s not fair to talk about that, maybe air it out a little, no, it’s more fair to pretend it’s not happening and then show up in New York without any warning and drop by for a chat, drop some bullshit story about why you’re here, that’s really fucking fair, Allie, thanks for being so goddamned fair.”
Allie stood up. This hadn’t gone how she expected it to. Her sister was yelling at her, her stomach too full, the heat from the ovens making her queasy, and nothing she tried was working.
She’d just thought she could drop by. Visit her sister. Talk, and see the apartment. Casually ask if May thought it might be a good idea to move their parents’ anniversary party to September, right before they all went up to the cabin for Labor Day, to give her more time to fix their family.
She hadn’t planned on getting caught in her lies, or on angry Ben, or on her sister yelling at her and telling her about stuff she’d had no idea was going on because she hadn’t been willing to listen.
She was botching it like she always did, without the first clue how to un-botch.
